Vegetable harvesting has begun in the agri-food industry, starting with spinach, and Bonduelle has chosen to be open with what is inside their cans.
In the spinach field in Santerre, Arnaud Bardon, Head of Agro Bonduelle in North Picardy, enthusiastically says that “there are no weeds, it is cleaner than a private vegetable patch. We work hand in hand with the producers”. Harvest has begun with spinach; peas, carrots, green bean, flageolet beans and many more will follow. 36 types of vegetables are grown in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardy by 1,400 farmers over 15,000 hectares.
Benoît Liagre is one of Bonduelle’s farming partners, through the organisation, OPL Vert. He says that “Bonduelle are very demanding of their producers to be high end and their field heads often go around our plots”. He goes on to explain that “Spinach is the most technical vegetable to produce over a very short cycle. In only 55 days, there is no time to make mistakes. Everyday, the plant moves and develops. A storm, hail, disease, the plant can quickly go yellow”. The spinach is mechanically harvested when it reaches 20-25cm.
2015 looks to be a good year, following on from the successful last two years. The agricultural works company, Picardie Récoltes, has exclusivity over Bonduelles’s spinach harvest in the region. The mechanical harvest reaches 10 tons/hour. Arnaud Bardon explains that there is a maximum of 6 hours between harvest and freezing of the spinach.